EDIT: This thread might just turn into a general Q&A thread. Look further down for more details.

This is a basic skill set that everyone should learn at some point as a role player. It will also likely help you with writing a story. I would also like to point out that this is a prolific issue that many role players struggle with and do not even know it.

The Action-Reaction wheel, and the value/type of actions.

First, however, lets define what a player's job is, at its most basic core.

First and foremost, as a player, your job--before all other things--is to contribute actions to the role play so that the story is pushed forward. If you have a post where your character(s) commit zero actions in the post, you have successfully created a completely useless waste of time for everyone around you. If that sounds harsh, think for a minute: How do you possible continue a story, if everyone who has posted before you has had their characters do quite literally nothing? It's much harder to push a collaborative story forward if everyone else refuses to cooperate with you.

So! How do you create an everlasting chain of actions? The action-reaction wheel.

The action-reaction wheel is the basic premise that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Apply this to your writing, and watch the magic happen. When player A announces their name through dialogue, that is an action (ex: "My name is John."). When Player B reacts to this action by addressing the previous action and then contributing an action that follows it (ex: "Hello John (reaction), my name is Sarah, how are you?. (action)"), they can create an indefinite chain of events, with very minimal effort, that grows organically. Just like how if you push a wheel, it takes less momentum to keep the wheel going, than it does to start the wheel moving.

Exposition, on the other hand, gives your fellow players... Nothing of any real value beyond context. Use exposition to explain the reasoning behind an action, and use actions to further the story. Never use exposition to do last second developments of your character. It always comes across as crass and ill thought out. An example of good exposition is using the thoughts of a character to explain the reasoning behind their action, and describing their emotional state in their reaction towards another person's actions. An example of poor exposition is describing a brush that will never come up again, has no purpose, and just ends up being completely pointless for everyone else.

Protip: Only describe things that you will use, or which are relevant, as a golden rule of thumb. If you describe a bush, use it later for something. Whether that's ducking into it to hide, or lighting it on fire, or gathering food from it--anything. Scenery and setting should only be used to further the narrative, not to give yourself a literary handjob.

Now, for the second half: The value/type of actions.

You can skewer actions into several overall varieties and give them scaling values based on the situation at hand, but there's a pretty simple way to do them as well that, while not quite as accurate, is definitely superior for someone trying to master them. Specifically, the value of an action is in how easy it is for others to react to it and springboard further actions off of it reasonable, while the type of action can generally be relegated to passive and active. This does a good job explaining the difference between passive and active, especially MDK's response, so go read it.

As for how "easy" it is to react to an action, the more self-contained an action is, the harder it is to respond to. Two characters in a collaborative post having a long winded conversation with each other, leaving no breaks for others to jump in or respond to, is hard to react towards, it is self-contained by nature. Now contrast that to someone directly addressing your character in conversation, at least leaving you a single line of dialogue to respond to. They've directly reached out to you with their action, that's far more open, it gives you options in how to respond, and actively draws you in, rather than forcing you to attempt to force your way in like some kind of burgler.

Note, though, that collaborative posts are good tools. Use them when you need to expedite a simple conversation, or piece of character development. This is good. Just don't use them nonstop, to the exclusion of pushing away anyone else who could otherwise at some point interject. Collaborative posts are most powerful in scenes with excessive amounts of dialogue, especially the kind of dialogue where it's mostly exposition, to explain who you are, what you're doing, where you're going, and why you're going/doing those things. Like a King addressing the party? Let a party member or two ask a few quick questions to get all the information they need in a collaborative post. Then post that. It expedited what would have otherwise taken two months into a week at the most.

tl;dr:
Action-Reaction wheel is a series of nonstop equal and opposite reactions towards actions and makes physics teachers ludicrously happy. Exposition is like alcohol: A little is fun and makes you buzzed, but too much and you'll end up vomiting all over your friend's carpet and become a useless 160+ pound sack of flesh in the living room that nobody can ignore. The more you specifically address your fellow players and NPC's and the environment with your actions, the easier it is for others to respond to you, so be a nice guy, add some fuel to the fire before you pass it along, lest the torch of creativity dwindle and burn out due to your incompetency.

That is all, really. The basics of how to make every post you make in an RP useful. This doesn't guarantee it will always be good, but it does at least guarantee that you will never be the guy that derails the momentum everyone else was building up.

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I'm willing to provide any advice anyone is asking for here, but just in case you might have a common question...

Q&A

Q:

Jig said Could you expand on this with regard to post length? It's a great article, but it highlights one of the biggest challenges of RPìng: contributing a noteworthy post long enough to feel worth reading without resorting to godmoding, unnecessary fluff, or the unreasonable demand of having every post run by every player as one big collaboration. Any further words of wisdom?

A: Quality over Quantity, my dear Watson.

Great guide, Brovo. All too often and frequent do you find RPers who are happy to write posts reacting to what others have written before them without offering much in the way of actions or story progression for other players to use and push on with. I've had to explain it before, but my explanations never seem to be as good or succinct as your posts or articles. In future, if I ever come across a situation like that again, I'll just link this.

I look forward to seeing more of your invaluable articles.

Could you expand on this with regard to post length? It's a great article, but it highlights one of the biggest challenges of RPìng: contributing a noteworthy post long enough to feel worth reading without resorting to godmoding, unnecessary fluff, or the unreasonable demand of having every post run by every player as one big collaboration. Any further words of wisdom?

Jig said
Could you expand on this with regard to post length? It's a great article, but it highlights one of the biggest challenges of RPìng: contributing a noteworthy post long enough to feel worth reading without resorting to godmoding, unnecessary fluff, or the unreasonable demand of having every post run by every player as one big collaboration. Any further words of wisdom?

Quality over quantity. Construct your post based on how you react to others, then act based on your reactions, then explain those reactions, and if it's still too short, explain what your character thinks might happen and how they would react to that.

So for example. Player A writes about a killer spider. Your character is Johnson, a man with sword. Johnson has many options in this scenario. He can...
--Propose to retreat, or at least fall back and get allies and/or superior footing.
--Leave [Player A's character] to die. (Quite impolite though, and will rightfully get you a reputation as a damn, dirty deserter.)
--Propose a classic flanking attack.
--Charge wildly! (Generally unwise, but sometimes works.)
--Tell [Player A's Character] to fall back while Johnson holds off the spider.
--Attempt to communicate to the spider.
--Etc, etc, etc.

So, knowing Johnson has several options, how do we decide which one Johnson would choose?

Write Johnson's reaction. To the killer spider, then to his compatriot's position. Use exposition to expand on how he thinks of this situation, and to add in Johnson's emotional state, which will help to justify whatever course we take.
"Johnson saw the great, disturbing looking beast with eight spindly legs and giant fangs, with eight, disturbingly vacant black eyes. It frightened him a great deal, and his comrade did not seem to be well equipped to handle it, having only a spear to hold the monstrosity off with."

Lets see. Johnson sees a great monster, he is disturbed by how inhuman it looks, he is frightened of it, and he thinks his comrade is not well armed to deal with the threat. So would Johnson charge this monster? Probably not. Would he suggest a flanking maneuver? Well, probably not again, he thinks his comrade is ill equipped to deal with the situation. So what will Johnson do? A. Run away and leave his friend to die, or B. Propose a retreat. Well, this is a role play, so having Johnson leave his comrade in arms to die horrible would probably incur the ire of all of your fellow role players for the rest of the story and end in the GM hitting you with the mighty karmic hammer of +4 sucks to be you.

So Johnson is going to propose a retreat, based on his reactions and expository thoughts and emotional state. So how will Johnson do this? Probably by planning it out (exposition), then telling his comrade through dialogue (action) what to do, followed up with obeying his own plan (action).

"Realizing that winning was out of the question and that there was no sense to taking such a great risk, Johnson took a quick look around the cavern they were in. The tunnel they came from was large enough that the spider could pursue them, but a second tunnel, behind them and away from the spider which they noticed earlier, wouldn't fit the spider, but it would fit them. They could run there. Johnson yells out to his comrade. "DAVIAN! WE MUST FALL BACK! OVER THERE!" He points at the man-sized tunnel. "THE SPIDER CAN'T REACH US THERE!" He hoped that his comrade would listen to him, and then immediately bolted for it himself, deciding that he couldn't stay any longer even if he wished to do so."

If this is still too short, you can also add in additional thought and planning, even a little bit of motivation if you wish, though try to avoid overdoing it. (Remember: Exposition is like alcohol. Too much and you overdose and die.)

"Johnson knew that this whole situation would be a trap the moment he heard it being told to him in the Stereotype Inn. The booze was too cheap and the barkeep cheaper, damn him. Who knew what was inside the man-sized hole as well, it could be hordes of cockroaches or other disgusting things. Maybe even smaller spiders, with their luck, it probably was smaller spiders... Johnson swallowed back his fear as he approached the tunnel entrance. His sister was depending on him, there was no time for giving up and going home!"

So! What do we have?



That is easily enough to go into casual role plays with. It tells the other players everything they need to know, succinctly, and this assumes there is only one action going on in total to react towards. Remember, in a typical group role play, you will have at least three or four other people's previous actions to react towards before you even instigate your own. You can easily balloon a post's length to twice or even three times this one's size without any real level of effort on your part, except by acknowledging what others have done, which is what you should be doing anyway.



This is the minimum for advanced, and again, predisposes itself on only one action to reply to.

Remember, most importantly, at the end of the day: Length is never a substitute for quality. Length is a tool, it is not a means to an end. Combat sequences, action sequences, anything that has rapid movement and quick changes to the scene should not have massive amounts of expository garbage. That is the definition of purple prose, which is a poison that will kill any meaning your writing meant to convey. Even as a GM, in advanced, with role plays that typically last several months to outright multiple years, during combat sequences, I usually reply with one paragraph to each player involved. Because all of the players involved have not only what I've written to respond to, but each other, so if I shower them each with three or four or even five paragraphs of information, I'm going to be utterly drowning them in work just to be able to respond in a coherent manner, that addresses everyone's contributions to the situation... And I know for a fact a lot of people just don't have time to sit down and assimilate three hours worth of reading, to then write up at least two more hours of work on their part. Especially not in a timely manner.

So, if you have to release a short post to keep the story going... Do it. If you have to ask the GM a question or two quick to get the information you need to then decide what your character will do, do it. It's all about pressing forward, not about how pretty the post looks.